Poetry

Passing Show

Passing Show

Jody's Notes

I'd hate to think that all my work is ironic commentary on previous work--on already in-place genres. For one thing that puts too much pressure on readers to know things. A lot of people are impressed with the Flynn effect, but I suspect major artifacts are at work there. Obviously at work there. (Pace Krugman.)

(Sorry--there I go again, putting too much pressure on the reader. But come on: these days, people can at least get a working idea of what I'm alluding to by using Google or Wikipedia or Bing or whatever, right?)

Anyway, so there's this genre: call it "nature poetry." It started in the 19th century. (Really. What looks like nature poetry before that date really isn't.) And this nature poetry is suffused with all sorts of romantic twaddle that I can't get into now. In particular, nature isn't really being seen by any of these people. It's all allegory or something. (This isn't true of some 20th century poets--some of them actually know something about nature. And some of the poetry is even good--although not as a result of this knowledge.) Anyway, the important point is that I keep going back to this genre, and I can't help being ironic (or looking that way) whenever I do.

Why? Well, why not? Nothing else is evaporating faster from our world than nature is. It's evaporating away in every way that you can imagine.

So how are you supposed to think about this? How are you supposed to respond to it emotionally? Is environmental outrage a good idea or is that too simple-minded? Nostalgia? But isn't that sort of, I don't know, feeble? How about apocalyptic imagery? But isn't that kind of sentimental?

Here's an idea. Step back and think about what you're really seeing. Not things. It just looks that way. All you're seeing is some light. There now. Isn't that reassuring? It's all about appearances. And what's nice is that we can hang onto appearances long after everything else has gone away.